Increasing human mobility and worldwide migration processes of varying scope are provoking new experiences and practices of belonging related to the body, health care, and well-being. This is significant not only for those leaving their home countries and arriving elsewhere as newcomers, but also for the members of so-called ‘host communities’ who are confronted with social and material transformations of their life worlds resulting from large-scale human migration. In this workshop we aim to address how (embodied) belonging is re-imagined, negotiated, contested, practised, constrained, and (fails to be) achieved in the context of such societal encounters, and what the effects are on the well-being and health care of those involved.

In exploring health-related transformations in people’s lives caused by dis- and re-emplacements, we propose embodied belonging as a provisional term to connect social, moral, and political-legal aspects of belonging with its affective and sensorial dimensions. Workshop papers may address but are not restricted to the following questions: How does belonging matter in the suffering, (health) care and well-being of migrants and refugees, but also the homeless, disabled, and otherwise socially disadvantaged among the ‘host communities’? Which are the effects of particular politics of belonging and corresponding administrative regimes on institutional setups of health care provision? What are the consequences with regard to people’s capacities to maintain and re-create a sense of belonging and to sustain their well-being? What is the role of religious and ‘alternative’ healing practices in achieving and sustaining embodied belonging and well-being? How are the body and the senses entangled in perceptions, disruptions, and re-creations of belonging? How are (in)capacities to belong and respective consequences for people’s well-being shaped along lines of social division such as gender, age, religious affiliation, ethnicity, and legal status?

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